Managing Research Data: File Organization and Naming

Considerations When Organizing Files and Folders

Although exact organizational decisions and needs will vary, the goal of intentional file and folder organization is to improve the efficiency of navigating between folders to find particular files. Part of this is accomplished by planning out the structure of your file directory for a particular project so that sub-folders within the directory represent important categories or attributes such as:

• Year
• Status (raw, processed, archived)
• Type of output (data, code, transcripts, protocols, presentations, etc.)
• Source, origin, or location
• Topic (e.g., courses, committees, conferences)

The exact attributes you choose to have your folders represent will depend on what makes sense to you logically, given your unique scenario. Different organizational structures will make sense for different projects.

Folder Naming

When naming folders, you want to keep names fairly short and informative. It should be fairly easy to scan through the folders in your project directory and determine which files exist in each sub-folder. For example:

• "figures" folder contains only image files of figures/graphs from that project
  • Other types of outputs (e.g., presentations, reports) are saved in other folders
• "raw" sub-folder within a "data" folder contains only raw, unedited data
  • Edited and processed data are saved in a different sub-folder

Using descriptive file names is another way to reduce the need for complex folder organization, as the files themselves can convey important information about their contents. The next section covers file naming in more detail.

Components for Informative File Names

The primary goal of creating informative file names is to make it easier to identify file contents without having to repeatedly open files to verify their contents. A secondary goal is limiting the risk of creating files with identical names (e.g., Document1.docx) that may end up being accidentally deleted or replaced if they end up in the same folder.

Informative file names are also the start to easier file organization, as the file names themselves can provide a lot of useful information. The exact components to include in a file name will vary depending on the person, the project, and even the specific type of file. The following list provides some components you may consider including in file names, depending on your needs:

• Date (e.g., file creation date, presentation date, collection date, etc.)
• Initials or last name (e.g., the person who created the file, who cleaned the data, who edited the document)
• Project ID or abbreviation
• ID of sample, interview, subject, etc.
• Location (e.g., where data collected, where presentation given, etc.)
• Subject matter
• State of data (e.g., raw, processed)
• Source

File Name Formatting Tips

These formatting and content choices can help make your file names easier to read and more compatible with a variety of software and applications.

What To Do

• Use letters, numbers, and underscores when naming files to avoid compatibility issues
  • Hyphens may also be okay, although these can cause issues in programs such as ArcGIS Pro
• Distinguish words and other information chunks with formatting
  • CamelCase capitalizes the first letter of each word
  • pothole_case puts an underscore between each word
• Use abbreviations and codes to shorten file names, but be sure to document them somewhere!
  • 2nd Quarter ⇒ Q2
  • U.S. Geological Survey ⇒ USGS
• When using dates, follow the ISO 8601 standard, which reports from the largest to the smallest chunk of time
  • YYYYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD (unless you are avoiding hyphens)
  • Time can also be included at the end, such as YYYYMMDDhhmmss
• Include leading zeros if you are including some kind of sequence in your file name
  • This helps with sorting, as your computer will sort 1 and 10 differently than 01 and 10
  • Instead of sample1, sample2, ... , sample10 ⇒ sample01, sample02, ... , sample10
• For file name length, strike a balance between too short (uninformative) and too long (difficult to read)
  • Recommendations usually range from 25 to 50 characters long, but some applications may have file length limits, so be sure to check for that before you start naming files

What Not To Do

• Avoid using spaces, periods, and special characters such as ! # * & ) ~ : / = ^ ( , % '
  • Periods should only be used before the file extension (e.g., my_file.txt)
• When using dates, avoid ambiguous date formats
  • 09-10-2025 can be interpreted as either September 10, 2025 or October 9, 2025

Version Control

You may choose to include version numbers in your file names, but this is not always a reliable way of identifying versions. It is wholly reliant upon the person saving the file actually remembering to record a new version number when relevant, and the version number does little to identify differences between the two file versions. 

If version control and version tracking is important to you, considering using a version control system such as GitHub.

Other Recommendations

• Consider what order of components makes sense, both in terms of information delivery but also in terms of file sorting
  • If there is a particular component you can see yourself sorting by (e.g., sample ID), put that component at the beginning of the file name
• Use different naming conventions for different types of files

Document Folder Organization and File Naming

After you go through the effort of determining a logical folder organization and informative folder and file names, you don't want to have to continually revisit and reinvent those approaches. If you use README files to document project information, you can articulate folder organization, folder contents, and file naming schema in that file. Alternatively, you can create a document in your project folder where you articulate this kind of information.

If you work in collaboration with others, make sure all team members are aware of these naming and organization decisions!

Visit the following resources to learn more about file naming and folder organization:

Schedule a Consultation with Dani Kirsch, Research Data Services Librarian.

Content on this page adapted from guides on naming and organizing files and data from Brown University Library, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, Oregon Health & Science University Library, University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez Campus, Oregon State University Libraries, and Princeton University Library.